Go for broke on the Lotto

H

Horatio

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I remember a few years back a lotto syndicate laying down large amounts on the lotto draws with the huge prize money, i.e Christmas draw, St Patricks day draw or multiple roll overs, their aim was obviously to win big but I think their plan was that if they missed the big one, they'd make back a lot of their money on the match 3, 4 & 5's.

Does anyone remember the details of these guys, did the National lottery stand against them ? Were their actions legal?

I'm definetly gonna bet all My SSIA on the June bank holiday draw next year, maybe the wifes too, I'm feelin' fierce lucky !! :eek:
 
They did it when there were less numbers in the draw that almost guaranteed they covered themselves. That was the reason the Lotto added more numbers to their draw. In order to cover all the computations with another 3 or 4 numbers, the odds were impractical to try and cover. I'm not an algebra man but i'm sure somebody on here could explain it better!
 
This can work when the prize fund is close to or larger than all the possible permutations of the numbers. Of course you could still have to share your "jackpot" with other genuinely lucky punters who just bought a single ticket.

I tend to agree with whoever coined the phrase about the lottery being a "tax on idiocy" :)
 
At the time the syndicate to which you refer won the lottery you had to select 6 no's out of 36 ie 1947792 combinations had to be covered to guarantee a win . At the time it was 50p a panel so the total financing costs were £973896 - however crucially there was a guaranteed payout of £100 for match 4's so that even if several people shared the winning prize ( and you can never exclude that possibility) the syndicate was fairly well covered in terms of their outlay. In todays lotto you have to choose 6 no's from 42 or 5245786 combinations to be covered to guarantee a win so the financing costs would be €5245786 and there are no guaranteed payouts for match 4's ! By the way with about 40k in SSIA money you can only cover 40000 combinations out of a total of 5245786... and even if you could finance all combinations you might share the winning prize with 4 or 5 others !
 
Chances of winning the lotto are 1 in 5,245,786. Assuming your SSIA's are worth a combined €50k then your chance of winning the jackpot is 1 in 105.

I don't play the lotto but if I remember it correct the other prizes are match 5 numbers, match 4 numbers or match 3 numbers plus a seventh bonus number. Assuming I've got this correct then the odds are:

match 5: 24,286 to 1
match 4: 555 to 1
match 3+bonus: 441 to 1

So your €50k spend should see you pick up on average - 2 match 5's, 90 match 4's and 113 match 3 plus the bonus number's. You also have a close to 100 to 1 shot at the big prize.

Does anyone know enough about the average payouts from the lotto to calculate what Horatio's return will be?
 
i mind that time i know the guy who set it up was a hungarian ,he also published a lotto system of permutations, i think it was when the lotto was a 36 number draw
 
This all ignores the practical problem of processing enough lines manually. I think agents are now under instructions not to accept pre-printed lines, and the Lotto computer is probably looking for patterns that might indicate a syndicate. These safeguards were introduced after the Stefan Klincewicz syndicate.
 
what poor soul is going to have to write up all these tickets? Can you do it online now? Even still though, thats a weeks work. So, minus 1 weeks wages from your winnings
 
I remember the guy,he had a Polish sounding surname.I think the Revenue became interested because he covered all the permutations & therefore took the "chance" out of it & so the Revenue claimed he was liable for tax though.Don't know what happened though.
BTW,I've heard it labelled as a tax on the mathematically challenged.
 
i mind the time well now as the place i do the lottery in ,the owner had told me then, one of the syndicate had called with him and had the carboot full of
boxes of lotto tickets ,he only got a few thousand done with this outlet as its a bar and was taking up to much time, but they achieved their point,im quite sure syndicates are operating the lotteries but in a much smaller way, myself i do a 20 euro flutter each week taking in the 3 draws
 
ainya said:
i mind the time well now as the place i do the lottery in ,the owner had told me then, one of the syndicate had called with him and had the carboot full of
boxes of lotto tickets ,he only got a few thousand done with this outlet as its a bar and was taking up to much time, but they achieved their point,im quite sure syndicates are operating the lotteries but in a much smaller way, myself i do a 20 euro flutter each week taking in the 3 draws
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what?
 
MugsGame said:
This all ignores the practical problem of processing enough lines manually. I think agents are now under instructions not to accept pre-printed lines, and the Lotto computer is probably looking for patterns that might indicate a syndicate. These safeguards were introduced after the Stefan Klincewicz syndicate.
Click to expand...
These safeguards are nonsense anyway. The lotto people were embarrassed when the syndicate tried to cover all combinations that time when there was a guaranteed £100 for match 4. I read somewhere that they realised what was going on and started shutting down certain Lotto machines. 'Lotto computer looking for patterns . . ' doesn't mean anything as any line has the same chance as any other line. Indeed if someone wants to do all combinations they should be able to walk into the Lotto head office, write a cheque and get one ticket to cover this.
 
From wikipedia

In a 6/36 lottery, the odds of matching all six numbers and winning the jackpot are 1 in 1,947,792. At an original cost of £0.50 Irish punt (€0.63 euro) for each six-number combination, all possible combinations could be covered for £973,896 (€1,236,848). When the jackpot reached £1.7 million (€2.1 million) for the May bank holiday in 1992, a 28-member Dublin-based syndicate organized by 43-year-old half-Polish businessman Stefan Klincewicz attempted to buy up all the possible combinations, thus guaranteeing a jackpot win. Klincewicz and his team had spent six months marking paper playslips in preparation for the "sting." Although the National Lottery attempted to foil the plan by introducing a limit on the number of tickets any machine could sell, and by switching off terminals Klincewicz's team of ticket purchasers were using heavily, the syndicate did have the winning numbers on the night. However, two other winning tickets were sold, so the syndicate was able to claim only one third of the jackpot, or £568,682 (€722,226). Many smaller match-5 and match-4 prizes brought its total winnings to approximately £1,166,000 (€1,480,000), representing only a modest profit after expenses. Klincewicz appeared on the popular talk show Kenny Live and later cashed in on his shortlived notoriety with a popular self-published lottery-system book entitled Win the Lotto.
To prevent such a scheme from recurring, the National Lottery changed Lotto to a 6/39 game in August 1992, raising the jackpot odds to 1 in 3,262,623. To compensate for these longer odds, the company added a "bonus number" to the drawings and awarded prizes for match 5+bonus, match 5, match 4+bonus, match 4, and match 3+bonus. In September 1994, Lotto became a 6/42 game, which made the jackpot odds 1 in 5,245,786. The National Lottery made this change to generate bigger rollover jackpots, partly so people living near the border with Northern Ireland would not forsake Lotto for the significantly higher jackpots available in the 6/49 British National Lottery, which began operations in November 1994. At this time, the National Lottery also introduced computer-generated "quick picks" as an alternative to marking numbers on paper playslips. Some smaller retailers now only offer the quick-pick option.
In 1998, the cost of Lotto rose from £0.50 to £0.75 per line of six numbers. With the introduction of the new euro currency on January 1, 2002, the cost became €0.95, and was shortly thereafter rounded to €1.
 
Isn't it the case that there are 5,245,786 permutations of 6 (non repeating) numbers drawn from a pool of 42 (e.g. see here) so the cost of guaranteeing at least a share in the jackpot would be €5,245,786 - i.e. hardly worth it.

Post crossed with DirtyH20's.
 
Okay I didn't know there was also prizes for 5+bonus and 4+bonus. The odds of winning these are 874,298 to 1 and 9,992 to 1 respectively.
 
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ClubMan said:
Isn't it the case that there are 5,245,786 permutations of 6 (non repeating) numbers drawn from a pool of 42 (e.g. see here) so the cost of guaranteeing at least a share in the jackpot would be €5,245,786 - i.e. hardly worth it.

Post crossed with DirtyH20's.
Click to expand...

Yeah but the jackpot isn't the only prize. I've posted the odds of winning the other prizes. Don't know what the payouts on these are though.
 
One way or another you'd need to win €5.2M plus expenses for the efforts involved to make a brute force approach worthwhile. Sounds implausible but I suppose the answer is in the number crunching.
 
ClubMan said:
One way or another you'd need to win €5.2M plus expenses for the efforts involved to make a brute force approach worthwhile. Sounds implausible but I suppose the answer is in the number crunching.
Click to expand...

The original poster mentioned nothing about a brute force approach but rather suggested spending two entire SSIA's on the lotto.

The odds for the different prizes are:

jackpot: 5,245,786 to 1
match 5+bonus: 874,298 to 1
match 5: 24,286 to 1
match 4 plus bonus: 9,992 to 1
match 4: 555 to 1
match 3+bonus: 441 to 1

If he had blown €50k on Saturday's draw, then based on the above odds he could expect to win about €9k in prize money.
 
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